More often than not, a bad employee is either a poor hire (hiring manager’s fault), or poorly managed (the manager/owner’s fault). Even lazy people can be coached and pushed to work hard. It just requires adequate direction and boundaries. Allowing phones on the job is rarely a good thing as the temptation to bend the rules to look is so strong, as most people are addicted to their phones. We allow phones for music in an earbud but we have boundaries… They’re not to be on their phones, they’re only to wear one ear bud, and they’re to have the music or whatever at a lower level so we can communicate without having to wait for them to find their phone, open it up, and pause or mute. We’ve made it clear they will lose those privileges if it becom3s a problem so they’re expected to police themselves, and so far we’ve not had issues. One usually pulls her bud out when we talk to her rather than fiddling with her phone, and the others are good with hearing us and communicating with it running in their ear.

You say the work is monotonous… do they have enough to keep them busy most of the day? Or are there stretches with nothing? Lulls are the worst for keeping people on task. Also, if they’re new and they’re already struggling to stay on task and off their phone it may be that they don’t like the Job or environment so that may be a discussion to have with them also. Maybe they need some modification to their day, or maybe it’s not working out for them but they aren’t quitting yet bc they need the job. If its the latter it’s not your duty to employ them without some form of production until they find something better.